Yemen rebel attack kills 14 Sudanese soldiers — military sources

DUBAI — A Yemeni rebel attack near the country's northwest border with Saudi Arabia has killed 14 Sudanese soldiers, Yemeni military sources said on Friday.

Sudan is part of a Saudi-led military coalition that has been supporting Yemen's internationally recognised government since 2015 in its battle against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The soldiers were killed when the Houthis attacked coalition sites in Haradh, in Hajja province on Thursday, the sources told AFP.

Sudan, ranked by the United Nations as among the poorest in the world, has sent thousands of soldiers to fight in Yemen, including from the notorious Janjaweed militia that is accused of atrocities in its own Darfur conflict that erupted in 2003.

In late 2019, Sudan's transitional government said the country had reduced its troop strength in Yemen from 15,000 to 5,000.

Dozens of Sudanese protested in Khartoum early last year, alleging their relatives had been recruited by a UAE firm as security guards but were despatched to war zones in Libya and Yemen.

The Yemen conflict, which began in 2014 after Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa, has sparked what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Millions of people have been displaced and more than 80 per cent of the population of around 30 million requires humanitarian assistance.

A UN Development Programme report last month said the war will have claimed 377,000 lives by the end of the year through both direct and indirect impacts.

Nearly 60 per cent of deaths will have been caused by consequences such as lack of safe water, hunger and disease, it said, suggesting that fighting will have directly killed over 150,000 people.